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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

So a company that sells to an industry that is primarily a blue collar boys club hires sales associates for culture fit (with the industry they are selling into) and then acts surprised when they abuse internal resources for amusement and make wisecracks that are wildly out of line for most white collar business environments.

The company is just acting shocked about the gambling to appease the public. Everyone knew something like this was bound to happen eventually. The cultures just aren't compatible.

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Painting blue collar workers as inherently sexist is classist. There are plenty of blue collar workers who are respectful human beings.

Exactly, what "class" they were should have nothing to do with it, they should have been fired and that should have been the end of it.

Not to mention the reverse; there are plenty of very public stories about very sexist white collar workplaces.

Also, nurses are apparently extremely "out there" culture wise.

Source: several friends (mostly female, some male) who are nurses. Their environments sound deeply toxic, and super political.

Everyone who's ever worked blue collar knows exactly what I mean. These people aren't any more racist or sexist or whatever than anyone else. They're just willing to crack jokes about a hell of a lot of stuff that would make most white collar employees cringe.

In a blue collar work place welders are dumb, electricians are gay, jokes about wives and girlfriends are fair game and a suction cup didlo is a tool of endless comedic potential, not a HR disaster waiting to happen. And the overwhelming majority of the time nobody takes any of that seriously or gets offended by any of it. It's just how the culture is.

Then you need to have a speak with someone in HR. (ed: to understand the impact) Attorneys on the other side of the courtroom dream of the payouts such a "comedic" situation would provide.

Or you could learn to take yourself less serious, most women would probably appreciate that.

Unless you’re a woman.

At an old job of mine, we'd all often work at golf courses, in a fenced area, thus we had a mountain of golf balls everywhere in the shop.

We'd always play a game where you'd throw a golf ball at the shop floor, trying to bounce it into the nuts of your coworker. I'd never even think of playing something like that in an office.

Condom/balloon/zip-lock full of acetylene is a classic. Probably don't do it in any workplace large enough to employ anybody with "safety" in their job title though.

My office mates run around with nerf guns like children. It’s not much of a difference tbh. Both are completely inappropriate.

Playing with nerf guns in the office isn’t much different than playing with your colleagues testicles? Huh?

I've been shot in the eye by Nerf darts at my desk, while trying to do work. I don't think that's much different than being hit in the pants by a golf ball thrown by hand.

You should probably get your testicles checked out by a professional if you find these experiences roughly equivalent in nature.

> You should probably get your testicles checked out by a professional if you find these experiences roughly equivalent in nature.

You're missing the point. I'd rather not be shot or hit by my coworkers at all, anywhere.

They're both examples of inappropriate workplace behavior.

I worked blue collar jobs for a long time and I was always offended by the kind of speech you mention. I just didn’t say anything because I needed the work and didn’t want to become a target.

...

Women are most often also involved there. They don't treat them worse, they just aren't that fragile. A.frwshmen could actually learn something about interpersonal relationships working such a job. My impression is that it is needed.

It is not applicable here though.

Eh, it can be but often times there's people in the wings cringing.

Reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain really opened my eyes up to how different the work place is at different class levels in modern society.

Kitchens are a notoriously cruder and harsher working environment than most. My wife went to culinary school to be a chef. While she stuck with it and graduated, she is totally against ever working in a kitchen. Instead, she's a daycare worker. That was the less stressful and more respected position for her.

It seems like, if all restaurant workers put up with the culture, it might be because those who won't never joined in the first place.

That book is significantly exaggerated and decades out of date. Kitchens remain horrible workplaces but not really in the ways depicted in that book.

It changed, not as much as it should have, but it changed in the right way.

I used to believe this, too, and participated in this type of humor... I thought it was ok, because no one took it seriously.

I realized later I was just not seeing the people who felt excluded by this type of humor.

>In a blue collar work place welders are dumb, electricians are gay, jokes about wives and girlfriends are fair game and a suction cup didlo is a tool of endless comedic potential, not a HR disaster waiting to happen.

Dunno what kind of lousy shops you worked at but nobody ever did anything like that at the granite shop I worked at for 5 years, nobody did that kind of stuff in the landscaping crews I worked on.

I hate to say it, but he does have a point. Anecdata: I was a mechanic quite a while, and while my coworkers were decent, I know that there were enough other shitty people in the trade that none of the parts stores in town could keep a female delivery driver on staff. I never knew of a female delivery driver that lasted over 2 months; and I had 2 black drivers comment along the lines of "those jackasses as shop X called me a n* b/c we didn't have something in stock". Delivery drivers weren't especially high-turnover positions, normally drivers lasted long enough I would end up knowing them by name.

And even though I felt my coworkers were somewhat OK, they would still make remarks (especially homophobic & racist ones) that would be at least grounds for disciplinary action in most white collar fields.

That (along with RSI and the pay) was one of the reasons I left the trade. I enjoyed the job, it is really satisfying to have that sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, but I was frankly tired of having to be around/associated with crappy people.

no snark intended...you should try roof repair/construction for a while

you're right. i did it for a summer.

those guys smoke, sit in the sun all day, work with all kinds of toxic shit, can fall, and don't have huge career growth potential.

they have nothing to lose and the humor shows it

> These people aren't any more racist or sexist or whatever than anyone else. They're just willing to crack jokes about a hell of a lot of stuff that would make most white collar employees cringe.

I wouldn't cringe if I heard off-color jokes at an auto repair garage.

I think I'd call the police if I saw a bunch of dipshits sitting around a workstation, targeting random women from the other room with facial recognition software to share degrading posts about them being receptacles for their own sexual gratification.

Aside from TV sitcoms and online forum caricatures, I haven't a clue what that kind of sociopathy has to do with blue collar workers.

There is a massive spectrum of juvenile behavior out there in workplaces. I've worked in a place where overt, graphic (often disgusting) harassment happened regularly, and I've also worked in a place where even making what you thought was an innocuous wisecrack would probably get you fired. Obviously the former is totally unacceptable and probably illegal, and the latter is stifling and feels oppressive. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and where it gets drawn is not necessarily the same at every place you can possibly work. There is not one line that fits all companies. Where the line gets drawn can and does depend on the existing workplace culture, the industry, the job function, the country, and the law. There is a legal/illegal point on the spectrum that the company definitely doesn't want to go near. There's a "reputational disaster" point that most companies also don't want to go near. On the other side of the line, there's the "exceedingly woke" point that you won't see outside of multi-national corporations and silicon valley. Most office workplaces draw the line somewhere in the middle, where you basically are expected to treat people thoughtfully and pleasantly, with dignity, respect, assume good intentions, behave like an adult, etc. You know, the "no assholes" rule.

You've obviously never worked with large numbers of telecom tower climbers, or linemen, or underground utility contractors. There's a reason for the stereotype of toxic masculinity bro culture.

By no means is it everyone but the percentage that could be categorized as such per 100 persons is definitely higher.

If you want to see it taken to an extreme go spend some time with Alberta oil/mining/gas industry workers.

>wisecracks that are wildly out of line for most white collar business environments.

I would daresay out of line for all business environments. Blue collar doesn't mean one must suffer boorishness.

A great many of these people would say that their workplace culture is fine and that white collar workplace culture is too PC and stifling.

They would say that but it doesn’t change the fact that they make people around them uncomfortable. They may have a right to speak but they don’t get to claim other people’s emotions are wrong or nonexistent.

I think the argument is not that other people's emotions are wrong or nonexistant, but that different cultures assume different behaviors in regards to those emotions. Responses to the different emotions are culturally coded, hence there is no "correct" way to respond to an emotion. Just because someone feels a certain way does not imply or entitle them to a certain kind of treatment.

I'm not trying to apologize for ultra-masculine culture, but this epistemic argument about the presence or absence of emotions boils down to "their culture is not my culture" and just increases the divisions between those cultures and accelerates the culture war.

In the end - if what you actually cared about was people being uncomfortable you'd think through the economic, social and technical structures that make them feel uncomfortable. IMO, it has overwhelmingly to do with naive adoption of technology, with PC culture being a way for those who benefit from this adoption to cope with the negative results of that adoption.

I’m saying if you want to be offensive then own it. Say you are comfortable offending people. At least I can respect the conviction.

Don’t tell me I’m wrong for being offended because it’s your “workplace culture”.

Pushing emotions (your own or others) into the right/wrong binary is what is worth avoiding.

I’m not sure what you are arguing here.

It's not either/or. Someone can opt not to try to modify their behavior in an effort to never offend anyone without accusing other people of having the "wrong" feelings. A person can also make concessions on some of their behaviors and not others.

Those aren't the people who have to worry about the bottom line. People who just kind of have a "job" and, magically, money comes to them every few weeks, sometimes don't appreciate how difficult the magic money is to create. Nor can they appreciate how easily it can disappear.

I always look at it as the customer has my money in his or her pocket. As I'm not, myself, ever going to risk getting that money by calling that guy's daughter ugly. I'm not even going to consider putting anyone in front of that guy if there's even the slightest chance that he or she might call that guy's daughter ugly.

A lot of business success and failure is just common sense stuff like this. That's probably at least a part of what gave rise to that blue/white division in the first place. The guys at the top simply don't want to lose money over something stupid.

I agree with what you said but with the caveat that a large part of dealing with both customers and employees is being able to wear both hats. You can probably skate by wearing just one but you'll either have bad morale or miss out on some customers. Letting people act uncouth when it's not inappropriate to do so is basically free. Like anything you have to be reasonable and it comes down to a judgement call.

Letting people act uncouth when it's not inappropriate to do so is basically free.

No it's not free, because it bleeds. It bleeds into interactions where it's completely inappropriate. You want to be uncouth, do it at home in places where there is no possible connection to me or my business. You're at this business, then you're on your P's and Q's or you're out. Simple as that. Times are already hard enough without throwing nuggetheadedness on top of everything else that's losing businesses money and putting employee livelihoods at risk.

>it's not free, because it bleeds. It bleeds into interactions where it's completely inappropriate.

But the million dollar question is how much it bleeds and whether that is worse than the trade-offs you get from telling people not to joke around. (obviously it's a scale not a binary choice)

Sure it's a scale. My point is that people who are responsible for keeping the money for everyone's paycheck flowing are going to use a different scale than people who have no responsibility for keeping the money for everyone's paycheck flowing. It should be obvious why that is.

Yes, because PC doesn't change the dispositions. I have worse experiences with prejudices that were underhanded while holding to etiquette just fine. I prefer the more honest variant if it has to be.

But it isn't a masculinity problem, it is just plain dominance behavior. That can have different manifestations. Some use drastic expressions, some try to shield women from the barbaric hordes.

Professional distance has its place in business of course.

Yeah, and when the woman start shooting back and is actually funnier than the bully, he start trying physical "play", and go cry to the boss once he's taken a knee in the nuts.

Listen, i won't argue about "too PC", but in my experience, if a workplace have a not PC culture and the target of discrimination start shooting back harder than the bully, it always end poorly for everyone.

I share this thought. I have worked in different industries and the hyper sensitivity of a modern office just makes me withdraw from all social activity. I'm in constant fear of doing the wrong thing which seems to change day by day.

I'm a decent person and I treat people with respect. The reality is this isn't the goal of PC, I have to be socially submissive to the trend of the month.

Nice classsplaining.

It went onto a company Slack. These are not sales athletes. An athlete is easily intelligent, in this case would have a private whatsapp group or similar. These are sales dumb jocks.

Which doesn’t alter your point at all.

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